#taking ONE life out of revenge does nothing productive or life-giving to stop the cycle that he is angry about

[heavensjahar]

THEN GO START A BETTER COMPANY AND HELP LIVES INSTEAD OF TAKING THEM IDC

"It's extremely out of touch and it's an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience." — Luigi Mangione

Photographed by Benjamin B. Braun while being led into court.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 134 Review

Thank you. Thank you so much. This means so much to me.

(Ofc this chapter is called “In the Depths of Despair.”)

Sigh.

So, I guess I have to have an opinion on this chapter now.

For a while there, it looked like SNK had made the right choice.

Eren was the asshole. He was insubordinate, ungrateful, uncooperative, and above all else, a fucking sociopath. Cool, got it. One and done.

But then his friends started talking about how it was really their fault he’s doing this.

Ok, that’s fine. They’re desperate to stop him, so they’re just saying whatever they think will ingratiate themselves with Eren and help talk him down. Dynamics like that are very common in abusive relationships.

Now we arrive at this chapter, where even random people are saying Eren is a victim *as he is murdering them!*

It is patently absurd that Eren is having a warranted or natural or reasonable reaction to what he’s been through.

If Eren were a better person, he would have known that mass murder against the Eldians was wrong because mass murder is wrong. Unfortunately, Eren is a fundamentally amoral person. The only moral compass he has to guide him is a childish belief in “you hit me, so I get to hit you.”

He’s said as much on multiple occasions. He has said, “If someone tries to take my freedom away, I will take their freedom away.”

Instead of being the better man and ending the killing, his solution was to kill more people than them, faster and on a larger scale.

I think the clearest picture of Eren’s worldview was given when he spoke to Historia. He said the only way to end the cycle of violence was to destroy the whole world.

That is Eren’s deeply felt belief: there can be no peace or coexistence; the only way to win is to be the last man standing.

This mindset is so natural to him that he will even kill his friends for opposing him.

He told them that they were free to oppose him, and he was free to fight back. That’s how he justifies killing them to himself. They have the choice to oppose him, so if he fights back and kills them, it’s their fault they died, not his, because they could have made the choice to flee and live, but decided to stand and die.

In reality, the alliance is fulfilling a moral duty to protect life, while Eren is an asshole who has killed billions.

The series wasn’t kind to Eren about that. He was depicted as a cheering child as he murdered everyone. The Rumbling was not white washed either. The take away was obviously that Eren’s decision was not the product of a sound mind.

And yet.

Now I have to wonder if the series is seriously trying to say the Rumbling embodies some form of justice.

There are multiple layers to this issue, so let’s start at the surface level.

So in what is obviously a ham-fisted attempt by Isayama to lecture the audience about morality, a Random Commander Guy filibusters about the ills cast by the Marleyans on the Eldians and how this has rebounded back at them.

It is generally considered good writing for characters to get their just desserts. If someone sells drugs to kids, you expect something bad to happen to them. If someone helps a kid cross the street, you expect something good to happen to them.

What’s different between a generic case of just desserts in a story and this chapter in SNK is that the dessert is typically delivered through some nebulous, karmic force, rather than a vengeful twerp with God-like powers.

When the drug dealer’s car blows up, it’s karmic fate, not revenge.

The car doesn’t blow up because one of the kids devoted his life to exacting revenge, it’s because the car just blows up for no reason, or because something completely unrelated to the dealer causes a bomb to be planted in the car, or the dealer brought it on themselves by getting caught up with terrorists.

People may or may not deserve to suffer, but it’s fine to show people suffering if you’re just trying to make a point about how people should act.

Eren’s a different case. For several reasons.

To help untangle why, let’s think about the death penalty.

The death penalty is an example of retributive justice. Put simply, it’s the idea that retribution can be morally just.

The Rumbling is immoral precisely because it is something a supporter of retributive justice would emphatically NOT support.

Most supporters of the death penalty would justify it as an act by a legitimate societal authority. Eren is not that.

Eren is not an authority figure. He does not speak for the Eldian people and has no right to exact this genocide on their behalf. No one made him King of the Eldians. It’s not his place to decide what’s in the Eldian’s best interest.

Also, killing people because “it’s what the scumbag deserves” is usually justified because it’s a sentence for a crime handed down in a legal process.

Rights can be taken away, but not arbitrarily. Transparency is an important part of this. Acts that are a crime are public knowledge, as well as the prescribed punishments. The criminal law is also supposed to apply to everyone equally, not selectively. To say nothing of the law itself being duly enacted by a legitimate governmental authority.

The same principles apply to the process by which a right is taken away. The process must be laid out in a law that was duly enacted by a legitimate government authority, applies to everyone, and is publicly known.

Eren’s process, of *fucking* course, is nothing like this. Eren has no legitimate authority. He’s a Guy With an Opinion who bumbled into attaining absolute power, and now he’s acting on that Opinion.

He not the government punishing a convict. He’s a guy with a gun shooting people he doesn’t like. The Rumbling is not just retribution, it’s just murder.

Commander Guy says that if they knew this would happen, they would have acted differently.

That’s a good point.

Why the fuck do they deserve to die, then?

To some extent, everyone’s worse impulses are kept in check by the knowledge that there will be consequences if they act rashly.

But it’s not just that.

Laws are public knowledge for a reason: it’s fair. If you know your act is a crime and that performing said act will result in a certain punishment, then by committing the act anyway you have tacitly accepted whatever punishment will be meted out.

The moral onus is placed on you.

This is why knowledge that you are committing a crime is necessary to be convicted of a crime.

In principle, the case with the Marleyans is the same. Is it fair to punish someone for an act they did not know would carry that punishment? No.

They may know the act was immoral, but that is not the same thing as knowing it will lead directly to their death.

And needless to say, but you only deserve to be punished for an act if you deserve to be punished for that act. The Marleyans do not deserve to be punished for that act.

There are multiple ways a wrong can be righted. There are punitive ways, in which the perpetrator is harmed outright. There are also restorative ways, in which the victim is compensated for the harm done to them, usually at the expense of the perpetrator.

I have already explained why Eren lacks the authority to pass judgement on the world, and that the process by which he made his decision was completely illegitimate, but it needs to be said that this punishment is totally improper in itself.

Wiping out humanity is purely punitive. To use the obvious analogy, I don’t think any sane person would argue white people deserve to be punished for racism. Supporters of racial justice usually talk about restorative, rather than punitive, forms of justice, like reparations.

The Rumbling does not make the Eldians whole again. It does not restore their trampled dignity. It is purely an act of vengeance.

Casting it as some kind of deserving retribution is crazy.

Oh, and, you know, suffering is bad, so retributive justice is wrong even disregarding everything I just said.

You could theoretically believe life is a miracle, but that people forfeit that right if they act wrongly…it’s not something many people would support.

If Dino!Eren had been depicted as a random force of nature that visited ruination upon humanity, we could have potentially gotten a good story about how hatred leads to no good outcomes. Like how Godzilla is a metaphor for the ills of nuclear weapons.

Instead we get a nihilistic tale about two sides punching each other until one keels over dead. And somehow the one that keels over deserved it.

What makes it nihilistic is that you could easily reverse it. What if right before Eren destroys Fort Salta, aliens invade the Earth and help the Marleyans.

Now the Eldians are on the verge of annihilation and *Eldian* Commander Guy gets his turn to say “Woe is us who surrendered to hate. We deserve this.”

There is no right side or wrong side. No deserving side or innocent side. The Eldians were cheering for genocide the same as the Marleyans. The difference is the Eldians had a God on their side.

The morality of this series is just all over the place.

The Alliance and Eren are equally sinful, but now Eren is an agent of karmic destiny and his victims “deserve it.”

There isn’t much to talk about this chapter besides that.

Armin still hopes to take Eren alive, but good luck with that.

Eren can manifest other titans from his body, which is cool I guess, though it’s pretty clear this power only exists to give the Alliance things to fight.

There were a lot of allusions to parenthood this chapter. The baby and the cliff. Reiner’s mom realizing how shitty she’s been. Historia’s pregnancy. The Commander Guy saying it’s the fault of “us adults.” The numerous shots emphasizing the kids at Fort Salta.

Child abuse is a common theme of SNK. And not just parental abuse, but societal abuse, too. Children are the victims of individual foibles and broader social ills, like racism and police brutality.

The cycle of violence at the heart of the series’ conflict is bad for everyone, but the story emphasizes that it is bad for children in particular. It harms them, and leads to a world that is worse off for them.

If there’s one takeaway from SNK, it’s that we should think of the children. Adults shouldn’t just take care of their kids, they should fix broader social issues, if not for themselves then for the children’s sake.

It’s a fucking insult.

Historia’s pregnancy is all but confirmed here. There’s no way it’s fake. There may have been motive to fake being pregnant, but there is no fucking way she’d have a reason to fake *birth*.

I always leaned towards the pregnancy being real, so that didn’t get to me. What gets me is that Historia is just…there. On Paradis. On the sidelines.

Not only was Historia, who is the only likable female character in this show now, impregnated, she’s also been MIA most the last two story arcs.

I had thought Isayama was saving her for the finale. Surely, Isayama understands that if you sideline a major character for no reason, they have to come into play at some point, I thought. Surely.

Characters are tools; they exist to be used. So use them.

But no, it seems Historia is legit not going to be a thing in this final battle. My dreams of the domineering boss saving the day are dashed.

But what really messes with me is how shafted Historia has been since basically the end of the Uprising Arc.

Historia’s only contribution to the plot after Uprising, but before the pregnancy was making the disastrous decision to make the truth of the world public, which paved the way for Paradis society to become radicalized and back Eren’s coup.

She has done nothing other than that.

Obviously her pregnancy will have thematic importance, but at this point the best Historia stans can hope for is that she’s the main character in the epilogue.

I’ve always assumed the pregnancy was the product of a loving relationship. For all his incompetence with Historia, I was willing to assume Isayama would not force her to carry a forcibly impregnated child to term.

And you know that even if the child is the product of rape, Historia will still have to say she loves and accepts them as her child and will raise them lovingly, with no regard or acknowledgement of the trauma of having to raise a child born out of her being raped.

Because the theme of the story.

All life is a miracle.

All children deserve to be loved.

Even if it was rape.

Except it’s more complicated than that, and I’m terrified to think that Isayama may not understand that.

So for now, I choose to presume that Historia is pregnant because she loves someone, decided to have a family with them, and we’re being led to believe she was raped for shock value.

But arguably more important is what this means for the queer audience.

Historia’s first love interest was another woman.

She’s queer. A lesbian. A dyke. What have you.

Now you’re telling me she either loves a man, or was not only raped, but has to love and accept the child that results from that trauma?

And for what?

So we can end the manga on a speech by Historia moralizing about the value of posterity?

Historia stands at the nexus of two subjects in this manga: the value of posterity and the denigration of queer people.

It is very homophobic of this series to pair a queer character with a dude to affirm a message about the value of children and motherhood.

As if queer people can’t have children.

We seem to be headed down that path.

It didn’t have to be like this.

Queer people can have children through artificial insemination. And artificial insemination is conceivable with Paradis’ current level of technological development.

Isayama is choosing to do this because queer people are not a part of his vision of a world where people, especially children, are able to live free.

That’s very sad, because it shows how empty SNK’s morals are.

So who’s the slave here?

Who here is truly free?

The ones who are free are the ones who aren’t reading Attack on Titan anymore.

[missmentelle]

Do you think I'm bad for treating my parents just as horrible as they used to treat me?

I don’t necessarily think you’re a bad person, but I do think that this might not be the best use of your time. 

As humans, I think it’s a pretty natural impulse for us to want revenge on the people who’ve wronged us. When someone has hurt you, it can be very tempting to think about how good it might feel to see that person get hurt back. This can be especially true of abusive parents - as a child, you were powerless to fight back against the ways that they treated you, and now that you are an adult, the thought of using your newfound power to get back at them can be very enticing. I can understand the attraction here.  But this situation is not about what your parents deserve - it’s about what’s genuinely best for you. 

When you escape from something as horrible as child abuse or a generally crappy childhood, you need to think about what’s actually going to help you recover from those experiences and move forward with a happier and healthier life - and continuing to have a toxic relationship with your parents is not going to help you do that. When you keep your parents in your life so you can torment them, you are keeping that cycle of rage, anger and abuse going, even if you are now on the other side of it. Instead of learning healthier relationship patterns and reclaiming the time and energy that you’ve lost to them, you are continuing to let toxic people take up space in your heart and mind, and you are digging yourself deeper into entrenched patterns of harm and abuse. Saying or doing something terrible to your parents might give you a temporary sense of power over them, but causing them harm doesn’t heal you.

There’s also the fact that, while you and your parents may be on relatively equal footing right now, that’s not always going to be true - your parents are going to get older and sicker and weaker as you come into the prime of adulthood. Eventually, you’re going to reach a point where you are simply abusing people who can’t really defend themselves, exactly like your parents did. I know that you may want your parents to know how it feels to be treated the way you were treated, but resorting to their tactics just opens you up to the same anger and bitterness that drove them to mistreat you in the first place. It also doesn’t reflect as well on you as you’d hope - even though the friends, family and significant others in your life can understand having a bad relationship with your parents or not wanting contact with them, watching you actively mistreat your parents will put a lot of people off, regardless of your reasons for doing it. There comes a point where it starts to make people wonder what else you might be capable of, and it will harm your relationships and mental health rather than helping them. 

I know it’s fictional, but the show Bojack Horseman does an excellent job of showing all the various reasons why taking revenge on an abusive parent doesn’t actually resolve your issues with them [spoilers ahead]. Bojack spends much of the series trying to get back at his aging mother for all of the cruel and horrible things she has said and done to him over the course of his life. She was a vicious, critical and neglectful parent, and although there is no excuse for what she did, Bojack’s attempts to get revenge on her don’t actually take the sting out of any of the things that she did, and they don’t actually make her realize the error of her ways. He is just increasingly unkind to his frail, dementia-riddled mother - to the point that it alarms the people around him - without ever realizing that his mistreatment of her isn’t actually giving him the closure he wants. When she finally dies without any of the issues in their relationship actually being resolved, Bojack realizes that his escalating abuse of her was all for nothing, and that he wasted time hating her instead of meaningfully moving on - “my mother is dead, and everything is worse now”. 

Sometimes, the best revenge is living well, and leaving toxic people behind. If your parents - or anyone else in your life, for that matter - has been a consistently negative influence, don’t let them be a part of your life anymore. Cut them off entirely. Get the therapy you need to recover from the way that they treated you, and focus on building the healthiest relationships that you can. Sometimes the best way to get back at abusive parents is to build a life that doesn’t have a single trace of them in it - they just have to watch from distant sidelines as you defy their expectations, leave all of the unhealthy patterns they taught you in the dust, and create a life filled with love that they can only dream of having. It doesn’t mean that you have to forgive your parents for what they did - I don’t actually believe that forgiveness is always necessary or even possible - but you can choose to rise above the example that they set and live a life that doesn’t involve them. 

For what it’s worth, my own mother has struggled with this for most of her adult life. She ran away from her extremely abusive home at 16, and for a long time, she concentrated her energy on hating her parents. When I was a child, I would overhear her telling my father that she sometimes wished her parents would be hit by a bus. They wrote vicious letters back and forth, competing to see who could make the most cutting personal insult. When I was maybe 8 years old, my mother finally made the decision to cut both of her parents off, and just focus on her own life. And it helped. My mom no longer came back crying from checking the mail, she stopped having heated phone arguments that left her angry and throwing things around for hours after they ended, and she started having time for things that were more productive for her. She found hobbies, made new friends, spent more time with us kids. My grandfather died last year, and before he went, my mother and I flew to see him for the first time in 20 years as he lay on his deathbed. That was a very emotional trip for my mother - my grandfather died from complications of Alzheimer’s, and it was difficult for my mother to process that the monster of her childhood just didn’t really exist anymore, and that there was never going to be one final confrontation that gave her the vindication she wanted. But she made her peace with it - her revenge is the life she led without him, and she was able to say goodbye to her father without feeling like there was anything left unsaid between them.  Sometimes you have to choose healing over vindication.  Best of luck to you.  MM

[kihyunswrath]

An essay on why I fight for Wonho

I think there has been too much of this “why do you even care that much?” bullshit lately and I’d like to make things clear, at least for my part. And I am assuming many other Monbebes can relate.

Indeed, why do I care? Wonho was never my bias, I have always liked other groups too, I have seen hundreds of groups come and go, it’s just one member in that group and although I want him to return, I actually want this entire industry to burn down to ashes even more and yes, that would mean death sentence to all idol groups. 

But first of all, let me ask this question in return: Why does it bother you that we care? Who gets to define what’s a useless endeavor? What makes you think I can’t simultaneously care for “more important” issues? Why the hell are you judging us for wasting time on this, when we all already know you wasted days watching that useless Youtube vine compilation, binge-watched that one Netflix series you didn’t seriously even care about, played that one stupid mobile phone game when you should have been sleeping, ate those two boxes of cookies that could’ve lasted you two whole weeks? Who are you to say things are useless just because it’s not your favorite idol group or whoever the fuck you care about, who’s under attack? Why do you think we have explaining to do, when literally none of this has anything to do with you personally and it’s literally you who fail to see the implications this incident had?

I don’t need to explain why I found a person inspiring as an idol and human being, why I found his background story motivating and moving and why I found his presence in Monsta X very important for the entire group’s mental health, group dynamics, success and happiness. I don’t need to explain why I find it upsetting that the people I cared about are torn apart because of no fucking reason, and that I can see that pain from their faces as they’re forced to pretend Wonho does no longer fucking exist?

I don’t fucking think I need to explain why I have empathy for a person who is under a police investigation just because. I don’t think I need to explain why I don’t find it fair that someone is under an attack for doing something that is not deemed as illegal in the most civilized, democratic countries. I don’t need to explain why I want to defend someone who’s kicked out of his group because of conservative internet trolls and a couple whose own background is about ten times more shady than Wonho’s. I don’t think I need to justify myself protesting for him, when he is fired from a job that has absolutely nothing to do with the things he’s being accused of. I don’t think I need to explain that unlike many others, I am indeed capable of reflecting this incident against the bigger context and see how flawed the entire Korean legislative system is. 

But let me do your homework for you asshats and explain what this bigger context is. It’s the context where simply having an allegation of whatever kind placed against you is enough to ruin your entire career. The context where people are literally lying about a person’s background and have been caught doing that, but can still continue with the investigation. The context where people can be punished again and again for things they did ages ago, apologized for, moved on and learned from. The context where literal rich drug dealers, convicted criminals sitting in prison, their minions and ENTIRE companies (cough pdx101 cough) might be able to escape from justice, but this one unfortunate person whose existence is only justified by the Korean population if he is superhumanly perfect and flawless, is brought down for allegedly committing a crime that was not harming anybody and was committed six fucking years ago. The context where you can be punished for something so meaningless that it feels like there is indeed space for a conspiracy theory or two. The context that paints idols as literal gods and goddesses who are not allowed to have pasts, backgrounds, redemption arcs or flaws to their character. The context that is taking idols from their hard-earned positions just because someone influential enough had a personal grudge against them. This context where Koreans are not protected by their own companies or labor unions but can be treated like non-human playthings, chess pieces and pawns just for having human traits.  

I don’t think I need to explain why I have empathy. I don’t think I need to explain why this bigger picture I see doesn’t only clash with my morals, but also potentially hurts hundreds of thousands of other people, because something like this could easily happen to them, too, especially if we now use this incident as an example of how things should be handled in similar situations. And if you as a person fail to connect the dots, if you personally fail to see why this is giving an ugly view into a ruthless society many of my friends and loved ones have no other options but to live in, I think that’s on you. That’s literally your personal problem, not mine.

Wonho was not inspiring because he was flawless, he was inspiring because he demonstrated character growth. He was not inspiring because he never did any mistakes, he was inspiring because he kept improving and kept sharing his love and gratitude toward his fans. He was not inspiring because he had wealth, connections and endless virtuosity, he was inspiring because he built his career from nothing and still remembered to explicitly thank his family, his friends, his loved ones and his fans every single day. That alone is something we can’t say from many other people.  

And if you think my argument is flawed because I was biased? Yes. I am biased. It’s not suspicious that people care about stuff more when it turns out to be personally relatable. Stop fucking pretending you are so virtuous, wise and pure that you already fought against bigotry, oppression, discrimination and bullshit in its all forms, way before you were even fucking born. That does not give you more social justice woke points, it just makes you annoying. Just because some Monbebes woke up to notice how flawed, ugly, embarrassing and pathetic the kpop industry can be now that their own favorite idol is attacked, is not a bad thing if it leads to them protesting against similar incidents in the future. Just because people cannot fully grasp issues before it has something to do with themselves doesn’t mean they can’t now use that realization as a boost to change the entire society. 

Yes, we intend to not bring only Wonho back, but also bring down the entire industry that made it possible for things like these to happen. Yes, we as human beings are capable of empathizing with people who we don’t have much to do with, but it’s not wrong if we fight even more fiercely when we try to protect our own. When was the last time you have done something similar? 

If our movement brings light to the fact how little protections workers have in Korea, if our movement makes people see how devastating consequences bullying and baseless accusations can have on people, if our movement continues talking about the same problem that caused a person to commit literal suicide a month earlier? If our movement makes it transparent to everybody how much power all these companies have over their idols and how they can not only treat them like shit after trusting and rooting for them for several years, but also silence all the remaining members and force them to continue even if they’re at a breaking point? If our movement brings light to the fact that maybe, just maybe it’s not fair to punish people for things that they might not only NOT have done, but also are literally meaningless even if he did them ALL, especially because they happened before he ever even was an idol? 

Well, I’ll call it a movement that exists for a good fucking reason.

One of my Korean friends, after being told about this, said that well, the only thing I now need to do is to change my favorite group and move on with my life, because I am literally just a customer and I can’t change things. And you know what? That is exactly the problem here. Without knowing it, she summarized the entire problem up perfectly with that one sentence. 

She and so many other Koreans (and non-Koreans) consider idols mere products. They think idols are here to sell us a certain image of a perfect, successful person who does not really exist as a human being. Idols just represent something the Korean society aspires to be, but if enough people get fed up with them for whatever reason, just to bolster their own feelings of revenge and jealousy like in this case, idols can be dumped and forgotten in a matter of minutes. That hurting one idol does not really matter, because there are people lining up behind him to do his job even better. That being an idol is an endless cycle of improving oneself, requiring less and less time for resting, recovery, privacy and human rights and asking less and less forgiveness from the audience. That if you get an important position in the society, it’s on you if you cannot handle the negative publicity that might follow. That if you have done one mistake once, it prevents you from ever moving on in your life, because it can come and bite you in the ass whenever, arbitrarily, just because, even if technically you had already been forgiven long time ago. That people who have gotten money and fame do not earn those positions because of hard work, but because they are supposed to be superhuman. And because there is no such thing as a superhuman, every and any idol can be brought down whenever they show the smallest sign of humanity. Even if that sign of humanity is just them showing open solidarity and empathy for a friend and colleague that was wrenched from them for no reason.

She and so many other Koreans think the only thing they can do as normal citizens is to pretend this one “flawed, miserable” individual never existed, because they are powerless against the decisions of the companies, press and rich conservative trolls?

And for some reason, somehow, these same Koreans fail to see how that reflects the state of their entire society and how it affects their own rights as workers, as human beings. They fail to see this very, very crucial factor: that idols are more similar to everyday Koreans than they are to the entertainment companies, wealthy chaebol CEOs and a couple of filthy rich drug dealers who escape their own punishment because of their even richer dad.

Idols are NOT extremely wealthy celebrities who have a freedom to choose their own paths, influential politicians who can escape from scandals after scandals or sons and daughters of the company leaders and estate owners of Korea. 

They are workers who have inhumane working conditions. They are faces to faceless, cruel companies who are intentionally hiding behind them to cover their own tracks. 

Idols have no real rights, freedom or future, and thus, they represent us normal people. What you do to one of these idols, you essentially do to every single one of his/her fans. You take our dreams away, you punish us unfairly for things we tried to learn from, you take away our voices that we used to express our own oppression and challenge the status quo.

Idols are not us, but they represent us more than any of these companies, leaders, rich heirs and heiresses and CEO’s could ever do. 

And that’s why I’m fighting for Wonho.

__

And please miss me with that cultural relativism bullshit. I know injustice when I see it. I can distinguish suffering and pain even in cultural contexts I am not born into. Also? Maybe if Koreans don’t want us to meddle with how they handle their own problems, maybe they should have really been thinking twice before trying to buy the entire world with the help of their idol industry. We can hold companies accountable. We can demand change. Companies and wealthy shitheads are not representatives of a culture. We know there are Koreans with us in this fight. 

And if this doesn’t change with us, right now, today... it will sit down with us until something like this happens again, and then the change will come in the shape of a fucking tsunami. 

And what are you going to do at that point, stand in the fucking way, or pretend your past mistakes can no longer hold you accountable?  

[blandmemoirs]

Anger

Rage, Fury, Fire, Pain, Momentum, Energy, unyielding emotion. When I am angry my mind is clear of all the torment of anxiety or doubt. I become objective driven, I become focused, I become energized. I am filled with a burning passion to move, and to never stop moving.

In days of old, my anger would manifest through methods of lashing out. Of attacking, of punching back, of inflicting pain on that which upset me. This is unproductive. To hurt another as a result of your frustration is unjustified. It doesnt make a situation better. It makes it worse. It builds further resentment between yourself and the person you are angry at. It prevents solutions. It causes more hurt. I learned this a long time ago and understand it today. I cannot swear to pacifism, but I will not resort to violence unless my safety or the safety of those I love is directly threatened.

I made a choice a few years ago to use my anger productively. If I am to become angry, I cannot lash out. I cannot hurt other people. I have to use it to be productive. Anger, like any emotion, is a flare of passion in the body and mind. It is energy, and it can be redirected in ways that dont further a cycle of violence. That is what I live to prove.

I am an angry person. I get angry, often. Its not a new development in my life. It has followed me since my childhood. Its sources are numerous. I cant attribute it to any one cause or happening. I have always been angry.

I know this because in kindergarten, I would pick fights with other children, often. Just random, chaotic violence. I enjoyed it. I liked hurting other people. Then I would go home to more violence. This time from my parents into me as discipline for my actions. My parents would belt me for more than just violence, it could come from me simply acting out. Sometimes I was spared the physical harm by recieving emotional harm from furious yelling. My parents taught me anger and violence, and their resorting to violence taught me to resort to violence. Might made right. I shouldnt put all of my problems on my parents, but they wear a substantial amount of blame for the way I learned to cope and act.

My father is an angry man. He grew up in harsh conditions with a harsh family that put him through worse than I've ever lived through. He made sure to tell me that anytime I voiced the tyranny in his actions. He resents his older brother, doesnt like his father, and has spent much of his life failing. Deep in debt from his own mistakes, bearing the blame for a fractured household and broken marriage, he is full of anger. He takes out his anger on those weaker than him. From the dogs he can kick when they bark too loud, to the children he can endlessly insult and shout at for minor transgressions. All made worse by alcoholism to cope. My father is not a bad man, but an incredibly flawed and broken one. He does make efforts to redeem and be better, but he has not yet atoned for his actions, and the marks he has left on his children will linger whether he accepts it or not.

My mother is an angry woman. Raised in a split household between parents who live irresponsibly and resent each other. She was a rebellious youth who took her own childhood away when I was conceived. A child raising a child. A lack of freedom as her life is indebted to my survival and later, two more. Dead end job to dead end job. A broken marriage and a dysfunctional family she is forced to raise with no individual progress to be attained. She resents her circumstances. She desires higher living and a fate she can control. She takes out her anger on those weaker than her. From the dogs she can hit to the children she can scream at for "negativity". All made worse by alcohol and weed. My mother is not a bad woman, she is just an incredibly flawed and broken one. A girl who became a mother too quickly. An independent soul tethered to a path of dependence. She makes efforts to be better, but often furthers a rift she created. Her anger will be remembered in the hearts of her children.

I do not know the true extent of my parents lives, I only know what I have seen, been revealed, and assumed. I know one thing for certain, they are examples of how not to grow up. The anger they live with is an anger I live with. To tame their beasts they drink and lash out, I must be better.

Which is why I cling so desperately to the example set for myself by the Incredible Hulk, my favorite character. A genius with deep emotional trauma turned into a monster fueled by rage. Dr Robert Bruce Banner must learn to live with the monster that dwells inside him. The Hulk, limitless rage personified, is a monster that does not want to hurt people, but just wants to be left alone among his friends. He is violent, but only because he recieves violence. The monster is capable of reason, of morality, of seeing through the surge of rage to know what is right and what is wrong. As such, the Hulk chooses to be a hero, to save and protect the innocent and to smash those who do evil. Bruce Banner must live with his anger, to know when it is right to let the beast out and to understand when smashing is the wrong option.

Banner has spent most of his life trying to rid himself of the Hulk, but the Hulk is not something Banner can live without. The Hulk is a part of Bruce, is a piece of his damaged psyche which will always exist. The gamma radiation only externalized these features.

Hulk also resents Banner, and wishes he could exist without him. Hulk doesn't like Banner's weak manner and conniving mind. Hulk doesn't like being locked up in a cage in the back of Banners mind. Hulk wants to be free and Hulk wants to be left alone.

These two characters are inseparable, and two sides of the same coin. Hulk is a manifestation of Banners trauma and repressed anger. Hulk is a destructive force of passion that can be directed to do good. These entities must coexist, for they need each other.

What does this have to do with me? In a less hyperbolic manner, my rage is a part of me. It does not go away. It never ends. It is a piece of my heart and mind. It is a force that makes me want to destroy all that causes harm to those I love. Anger does not cease within the chaotic storm that is my heart, it persists and waits for its time to possess me. When I am angry my body tenses, my eyes focus, my heart beats at rapid pace, my stomach churns, my body shakes. At its worst I lose sight and see nothing but flashes of red as I convulse into shivers of rage. When control of my body is returned the next moment, my mind is clear and I am energized in a way almost as potently as when I am in love. I can do almost anything. It is raw adrenaline. I move faster, harder, and with more force and precision than when I am in a normal state. I make objectives and carry them through. I become a machine fueled by limitless rage. It can almost be addicting. Sometimes I have so much force locked inside I feel an urge to scream. I often repress it for the sake of keeping attention away from myself. Anger makes me more effective in my work. Be it my actual job, my writing, or editing. I am so focused, creative forces flow, all through the red lense of rage. Sometimes I run, sometimes I drive, sometimes I channel this energy into speaking. An endless monologue or a consoling speech to a friend in need. For that is the true root to my rage. A friend in pain. When a friend is hurt, I flare up. The closer and more important my friend, the angrier I get. The angrier I get the more energy I have and the more I cant stop moving. My foot tapping, my leg bouncing, I pace. Anger does not debilitate me, it gives me more ability than I know what to do with.

It is not just that a friend is in pain, it is that I cant do anything to stop it. I can't do anything to change their cirumstance. I cannot save them from their suffering because the forces that hurt them are out of my control, out of my influence. I can only console, and console I do, even as rage paves the way of my actions.

When my anger releases its possession of me, I am left to deep introspection and concern. Did I do enough? Did I help? Did I do anything? Why was I angry? I feel rejuvenated, almost born anew. The passion has retreated to my internal self, and I am left feeling cool and calmer. Sometimes, in truly helpess circumstances, I feel empty. I was not enough. I didn't do enough. Worst, when my anger was used unproductively, I feel guilty. Knowing I was wrong and unjust. It is a betrayal to myself to use anger to harm others.

Today I was made angry at the hurt of one of the most important people in my life whom I care deeply for. Their circumstances are far beyond my powers to control, and they themself live far from me. The only thing I can do is send my love and support in the form of text or voice. It never feels like enough. My anger possesses me, and the temptation to strike out at the world that causes such endless pain for my loved ones exists. A random act of violence to atone for the wrongs done to another. That is not right. There is no justice in that. There is no good to come from it. So instead I made my objective to work harder, to make more money in my shift and to ensure my immediate environment was taken care of. I wished every coworker safe travels and good nights, I greeted and enthusiastically interacted with customers and pedestrians who gave me the time. Spreading good energy and doing good for others while powered up with this anger made for a more productive day. When the anger finally relinquished, I began typing. To explain, and to document for myself. I can do good with the frustration I feel. I can be a good man.

I understand this all very intimately now. A younger, less introspective Robbie did not. I got angry, had so much energy and power in my palms I only thought to make a fist. I would then use those fists for causes of pain and revenge, sometimes on undeserving parties. It built a guilt deep inside me that I will never forgive myself for. I can only be a better person now. Instead of making a fist I pick up a pen, or more truthfully I grab a keyboard. Words, endless words, inspired by anger and made real through my choices to funnel that rage.

I am inseparable from my anger. My anger is a part of me. I have to own it, and I have to admit to it. I cant live in fear of myself for what can happen when I lose control, as rare as such an occurence is. I have to instead use it to be productive, and clean up what messes I make with it. And I will make messes. I will hurt people. It is inevitable for an emotion as potent as anger. Sometimes the lense of rage prevents us from seeing reality as fairly as we might. Sometimes a fist is formed.

It is my responsibility and my burden to bear. I cannot blame others for my own nature. I can not allow myself to resent others for who I am. When I am made angry, instead I must find a way to resolve my conflicts and make good.

The Hulk has been saving the world for decades through his anger, and I can do the same. Its not easy. Living with yourself and accepting yourself is hard for some people who look deep into themselves enough. I used to cage this monster, to repress it. It would always free itself and come to the surface. Pent up aggression and bitterness blinds anger and creates pain. Instead, I will live with this intensity I call my anger, and I will continue to live to make it productive, for the benefit of myself and my friends.

I should not hate myself because I am angry. My anger is rooted in the love I have. There is nothing wrong with being angry unless I choose to hurt others with it. That is a choice I will not make unless the other is someone of truly abominable character.

Robbie Bland is an angry person, but he is not a bad person because of it. Make your anger productive. 'Nuff said. Thanks for reading.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I haven’t written many of these lately for a lot of reasons.  One of those keeps ringing in my head every time I think about sharing information online.  I’m not really a fearful person.  The last year alone is living proof of that.  But there are things out there that actively try to subvert your quality of life.  And they rattle some people’s nerves a lot more than mine.  I had to review some training videos for work in relation to cyber security.  The most impressive of which was a description of the GDPR which is one of the most extensive European privacy laws in regards to the Internet.  The other big one was about Social Engineering.  Great fishing expeditions in the sea of information trying to catch the Great White Shark. for fun and profit.  There were some great videos showing examples of this in the training.  Thankfully there were no demonstrations of cat fishing or reverse cat fishing to which I am relieved.  There was a line in there that hit home about people exposing other people’s private information for profit.  What I’ve learned after being targeted left and right the last few months has been simple.  I bring a lot of it on myself.  Instead of saying it is what it is I stop myself.  It comes with the territory.  Brushing up against a lot of these scams has taught me a few things.  Healthy skepticism towards people with the best intentions is key.  So is having your shit together.  I had to quit drinking three years ago to regain my focus.  This is the first year where I see it all for what it is.  It doesn’t scare me.  It definitely disappoints me. People behave badly.  That includes respecting another person’s privacy.  We bring it on ourselves sometimes trusting the wrong people.  Sometimes we give people second chances for being manipulated.  This city is constantly manipulated into dumb shit.  But there’s a healthy does of resistance after awhile that comes with standing your ground.  One of the people from security spoke about this concept of “putting on the mask” in Chicago.  It’s a useful technique in the Midwest.  Scare people away so they don’t take advantage of you.  Everybody here thinks everybody should be friends. It’s true people are genuinely nicer in Chicago.  But that Midwestern pushiness can wrestle you to the ground sometimes.  In a playful way right?  Gain your trust and get you to talk about yourself more.  Give up bits and pieces of personal information that you feel is innocuous at best.  And then there’s the reality of a million cameras, microphones and devices recording every nuance and tick.  One of the most intense battles in the tech sector in regards to privacy is facial recognition data.  I’d say based on GDPR it’s still pretty barbaric how we value, respect and protect privacy here in America.  The life I live these days is a fragment of everything I’ve ever sharied in public.  A vulnerable space outside my home where I exist only as an avatar of myself.  A hallucination of celebrity every step I walk.  That’s kind of why I stopped writing to be honest.  That and I know the person I write for already care and knows what I’m thinking.  I care about intimacy.  I care about privacy.  I used to be so shitty at keeping secrets.  Until I end up keeping one that means more than I bargained for.  

Reverse cat fishing aside, the modern world has many mysteries that remain unsolved.  Why I keep to myself should be my own business.  And yet I find myself referencing Mark Fisher’s concept of Capitalist Realism more than I am comfortable with.  I was reading about China and their housing market the other day.  It said there are some strict Chinese families that won’t let their children marry unless the spouse owns a home already.  Things have gotten rocky enough lately that the government has started to accept Intellectual Property as collateral.  So there’s hope in that I guess.  Here in America I work a non profit.  I’m enrolled in a credit union.  I make a decent living with a decent rent.  Going into debt for a mortgage by myself to show how productive I am isn’t my kink for sure.  I’d rather have children.  The moderate amount of stability I have and how I achieved it is always under scrutiny by other people.  Everybody ignores me but talks about my history behind my back.  I live with the pain of three generations of people saying they know me yet I haven’t hung out with any of them in years really.  If I thought about all this negatively it would drive me crazy.  With putting my past behind me I planned a lot more for the future.  I train.  I run.  I cook healthier food.  I know what I run on.  I know how much that costs.  And I could sit here for days and complain about money and how fucked I am in the face of the upper class.  And I could waste my entire life worrying about people who don’t worry about me.  Or I can make it happen in a realistic way with what I have.  A full and albeit peppered grey head of hair that keeps growing back.  A cat that wandered in from outside that now sleeps next to me at night.  A weird way of looking at the world that is both tender, cautious and brutal if attacked.  The mind fuck of it all is that you have to be comfortable with what you want to achieve.  And there’s no shortage of people out their that want to take advantage of your confidence and trust for thousands of reasons.  Which is why I’ve gradually thought more about how I share things online.  Also how I spend money in public.  Is it respected?  Is it safe?  Does it have context?  Can it be manipulated?  Will the terrorists win?  Who keeps sending me all these mother fucking political robocalls?  Will I ever make enough money to afford a home?  Does that even matter to me right now?  How much is my intellectual property really worth?  Reach out to attorney’s in your area.  Targeted ads commencing in five, four, three, two you get the idea.  We are all living in this utopia where we are desperate to connect.  Hellbent on being reassured in the face of absolute chaos.  And the switchboard operators are happy to link you into some bullshit that isn’t worth your time in the matrix.  It’s a proven fact.  When you lead there are no maps.  Nobody to follow except your own internal gut.  And facing the gut instinct that my hunches are always well informed with skepticism has been key.  But I still have to live my life in the face of all of it.  That’s my responsibility.

I do prefer being alone than with somebody who isn’t really there.   Fairweather friends are a liability to my responsibilities for sure.  It’s a funny realization because some of my best friendships are vapor at best.  There are people that get me without having to write a word anymore.  I don’t read too much into the why’s or how’s.  And there are some people so chatty and fake that I’m never really part of the conversation.  We all crave intimacy deep down.  We want to share an intimate secret with someone.  Real love.  Care and affection.  And at the core we let our guards down to let that in.  Sometimes just to feel it.  To know it’s there.  And the end result is based on mutual trust.  We seek out validation in places we feel are safe.  And ultimately those spaces become compromised after awhile.  Because the people we trusted abused the connection.  They couldn’t keep a secret.  They didn’t value or respect your privacy.  They threw the bait and caught the shark.  They hunt the whales with shitty harpoons and flaccid lines.  After awhile the sharks stop swimming in those waters.  The ecosystem gets all fucked up.  And the party is over.  The sharks just got smarter.  Or they found safer harbors for their emotions.  However poetic I describe it the realization for me is all the same.  I have not had the best of luck being open and transparent.  We as Americans love our freedom of speech just as much as we love taking it away from other people.  Human nature is flawed.  Revenge isn’t very constructive.  Being proactive about protecting the things you love is a better idea.  Just how draconian you react is bound to show up somewhere in your aesthetic.  I prefer a culture of avoidance.  I wash my hands of the virus just like the flu.  I quarantine myself from the for profit news cycle and the petty scammers.  I set up a bulwark in my life of practical thinking and fiscal austerity.  Sometimes it’s not fun.  Other times nobody bothers me with how I live my life behind closed doors.  That’s a constant negotiation that has nothing to do with class privilege or conceptual art.  I literally am the worker that Marx talks about and at the same time know the unfortunate realities of Capitalism.  I also know a lot of people’s opinion are backed up by hot air.  They don’t put in work.  They live to disrupt.  To make it hard on you.  To justify it as some test of your usefulness.  I’m pretty useful.  I enjoy my life.  I work hard.  I go to the movies by myself like a boss.  I have an empty space next to me at all times.  What fills that space is nobody’s business.  The person walking around in spite of all this in my own skin is testament enough.  I’m still alive.  I’m still pretty done with all of this shit.  And I still understand that I have to live it.  Being vigilant all the time can be shitty especially if you keep surrounding yourself with the same negative influences.  I’d rather surround myself with my cat and the occasional fishing across the ponds.  They don’t call them the Great Lakes for nothing.  There have definitely been some choppy waters out here in the deep web.  You know I’m a pirate of the High Seas.  More like the captain.  Ahoy you fucks.  Keep your ship together.  And I will promise to do the same.  <3 Tim

[henryconrad95]

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How Can I Get My Ex Back After A Year

[portfolioforwritingwork-blog]

How does one of the novels studied reflect on the differences between history and Story-Telling?

In this essay, the question asks how the difference between history and storytelling is presented in one of the texts studied on the course. In this particular essay the novel chosen is Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs.

 McEwan is a well-known author, renowned for his use of macabre imagery, and disturbing adult themes. In his novel Black Dogs, there is a complex number of themes included in the narrative, including social, political and ideological tensions. A common trope in his novels is that the narrator has something to do with literature, whether it is writing, researching or reviewing literature. In his novel Black Dogs, the protagonist attempts to write a book of his mother in law’s story, which takes place just before WW2.

The main threads of this story take place in Vichy, France. Historically, this was a particular town that was ruled by the Nazis until they were liberated in 1945. Until then it had been used as a proxy for the Nazi government.

The frame of the story the protagonist is narrating is set in the 80s, when both the war and the occupation have ended, and just the shadows of these things remain.

However, the way we receive this story is through the two digressional characters narrating their conflicting experiences to their shared son-in-law. This shows that history is not neccesarily one collection of events, but a mix of perceptions of those events. (e.g. June’s experience with the Black Dogs would not be the same as the men and women who they were trained to rip apart).

One piece of imagery McEwan uses to affect the reader is the Churchillian image of the Black Dog. Neither Jeremy nor Bernard ever experience the Black Dogs for themselves. This creates two issues – one of the unreliable narrator, and one of constant hearsay. Jeremy states the problem of an unreliable narrator outright when June starts telling him the story again; “I swear she adds another dog every time she tells that story”. This also shows the obsession humanity has with sensationalism, and is an issue throughout the novel with every story that the reader is shown.

 However, the stories we receive from other characters such as the mayor’s

somehow makes the encounter seem more real

 “She had been raped by the Gestapo, excuse me Madame” and she placed her hand on June’s

“That’s what we all thought” the Maire said.  “That’s not what we discovered later…Pierre and Henri Sauvy…They saw it happen…but they tied Danielle Bertrand over a chair…It wasn’t the Gestapo who raped her. They used…The simple truth is, these animals can be trained.”

 Even though we are shown several instances where they attack humans, we have no evidence that the ones who attacked June were the same who attacked Danielle, or that they existed at all. However, when Madam Auriac goes on to deny that this could have happened, it seems very desperate, and somehow her disgusted reaction gives the story more weight. This makes it seem as though she knows it is true, but simply doesn’t want to believe it.

The reason Madam Auriac gives for the two drunks making up the story is that Danielle was a wealthy woman whom they were jealous of. However, with the testimony of June’s experience it seems a desperate qualifier to the original theory.

 Like many holocaust deniers, she refuses to believe the awful story about her friend, simply because it was too horrific to accept. Many Nazi collaborators had a similar reaction when being shown the atrocities inflicted upon their friends and neighbors. Many deniers claim that they knew what was happening but simply didn’t know to what extent the suffering was perpetrated due to propaganda or even self inflicted ignorance.

 However, with all that is known about the Nazi atrocities, and the horrific stories that are still being constantly unearthed today, it is sufficed to say that the two characters that witness the bestial rape in the Nazi offices were probably telling the truth. In any case, they would have had to have particularly grim imaginations to lie about such a thing.

 In the novel there are differing ideologies playing on the same events:

June and Bernard experience; the rational and spiritual, the Augustinian and Iranaean. Both characters see history differently. Both experience the black dogs differently, and both end up with different world views in the end of their relationship. This can be seen through the way June mocks Bernard’s political alliances as a mouthpiece for the labour party.

 “Do you know what he wanted to talk about when he came last month? Euro-communism!...He said he felt optimistic!...Jeremy, he was actually excited! Just as we were back then. Progression is too kind. Stasis, I’d say. Stagnation.”

 Through her stories which she tells to Jeremy, June portrays a postmodern apathy, resulting in a worldview of cyclical history: the idea that history repeats upon itself with no real change in the way we live our lives, therefore resulting in the “stagnation”. This can be seen through the fact that Hitler and Ghandi’s fame and infamy took place in the same historical period. However, these ‘cycles’ are mainly anecdotal, reliant on aposteriori knowledge of the world, rather than something that can be measured or quantified.

 This then brings into question, what is history and what is storytelling? Traditionally, storytelling is thought to be linked to fiction, and history to fact. However, this would then cause the relaying of personal experience into the wrong category.

  “As I was saying all this, our train pulled in with a great clatter and an awful lot of smoke and steam, and just as it came to a stop June burst into tears and threw her arms around me and broke the news that she was pregnant and that the little insect in her little hands made her feel not only for the life that was growing inside her, but for all life, and that letting me kill that beautiful dragon fly was an awful mistake, and she was sure nature would take its revenge out on the baby

 Most of the stories in which June is mentioned are given an underlying theme of superstition which Bernard rebuffs with cold skepticism. However, whilst it is not factual that June held a dragonfly which would hurt her unborn child, it is part of her own narrative, something personal to her.

 The fact that Jeremy then goes on to defend her when she isn’t present shows how the younger generation of the post war period became heavily involved in it’s history. By asserting that “Jenny’s extra finger” was directly caused by “the moth’s retribution”, Jeremy is imposing a grand narrative onto both Bernard and June’s lives. The fact that we hear the story from Bernard however, misappropriates the ownership of that story. Although we know what June thinks she experienced, we are receiving her experience from her ex husband instead, thereby rationalizing her story beyond the grand narrative she insinuates.

 However, according to Adorno, there is indeed a grand narrative to our lives. All humans strive to organize nature and violence is our way of rationalizing nature. Therefore, all humans are innately violent, and the holocaust whilst horrific was not anything new. History seeks to remember what time annihilates – time seeks ends to everything. The change in production depends upon the individual remembering history, something which doesn’t exist without people remembering it.

This brings in the idea however, of a grand narrative; that humanity is heading towards something. In the novel Black Dogs, there is nothing left to get better or worse. As stated by Jeremy, when entering the concentration camp museum, “there was no one to feed or free”. This is ironically reminiscent of Fukiyama, who claimed in his own works that “History was finished” as it had reached an equilibrium, and that justice was now restored.

 However, These ideas are born of grand narratives. These ideas date back to the biblical ideas displayed in Agustinian an Iranaeian theodicies, both based on the different accounts of The Fall. Augustinian theodicy supposes that because of Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden creating an an equidistance with God, the world has depreciated, and evil has increased. The Irenaean theodicy, however, argues that God neither created nor necessitated evil, and that evil helps fully form humans. The alternative according to him, would be for us to live in a “toy world”.

 Both are too Eurocentric however. As the decades have progressed since WW2 and the holocaust, there has been more global coverage of other countries suffering from mass genocide. Therefore these theories on world progression are outdated, and the evil in the world is not growing we are simply becoming more aware of it.

 Whereas Hegel states that the soul is a determinate object, meant for a higher purpose as this quote states:

 Spirit does not toss itself about in the external play of chance occurrences; on the contrary, it is that which determines history absolutely, and it stands firm against the chance occurrences which it dominates.

  This brings into play the idea of cold rationalized violence, a sobering legacy left by the Nazis. Whilst Jeremy experiences the cold mechanized processing which Nazi camp inmates experienced during Auchwitch, he still can’t imagine the true horror of what the camp experience was like. In this passage he even slightly admires it the efficiency with which death and burial was carried out.

 “On our way out, Jenny spoke for the first time in an hour to tell me that in one day in November 1943 German authorities had machine gunned thirty six thousand Jews from Lublin. They made them lie in gigantic graves and slaughtered them to the sound of amplified dance music”

 Because there is nothing in this quote condemning the efficiency and irony of the Nazi’s methods in the extermination process, it leaves the reader with a sinister air of praise. It helps show the detachment of the younger generations of post war Britain and how they don’t immediately relate to the history unfolding around them, almost showing a sense of being overwhelmed by such a volume of history.

 The removal of the narrator from the novel’s main period of digressional action helps illustrate this point. Jeremy is not a part of this story, yet he makes it his simply through visiting the camp. “There was no one to feed or free” Perhaps this is McEwan accepting that he himself as a post war writer, has no part in telling the stories of the WW2 generation.  

In conclusion, storytelling is a powerful tool from any perspective. Past or present, the way that the generation who endured and fought through the holocaust are represented should always be represented in a  powerful way, as should the later generations learning about them.

 2. Philosophical problems in the novel

 This question asks for the evaluation of the philosophical problems in a novel studied on the course. This part of the essay will concern with the novel Black Dogs, by Ian McEwan.

The novel itself is set in the 80s, with the advent of the Berlin Wall being destroyed. Here McEwan is using retrospective to look back on something out of his, and anyone else’s control.

 A question which seems to arise a few times is the morality of nature. When June is attacked by the Black Dogs trained by the Nazis, the reader would most likely blame the men who trained them. However, surely if this principle can be applied to the dogs themselves, then it can go further. However, many choose not to, as if one goes far enough, we end up blaming the Allies, those who supposedly ‘won the war’ for us in the first place.

 During the post war period, many tried to create conditions to help explain the psychological conditions of the Holocaust. One of these experiments was implemented by Jewish psychologist Milgram. The actual participant would be placed in a room with a number of electric shock controls. They would then meet an actor who would pretend to go into the next room for a memory test. The actor would then pretend to receive electric shocks going up to 250 volts, acting as though he had heart trouble and remaining silent after a certain number of pretend shocks. The aim of the experiment was to show that Germans were more compliant than Americans, due to defined cultural differences, thereby creating a test for fascism. However, when testing the environment on 41 white working class American males, he found that most reacted by complying. This actually shows that most people do comply with authority when under stress.

 As this mainly shows how people can be convinced into commiting crimes they’d be uncomfortable with, a better example of conditions allowing the id to perpetrate harm is Zimbardo. ZImbardo’s study consisted of a group of college students who were going to take turns being the guards and prisoners of a made up prison, with hostile conditions. However, the prisoners became so disturbed and agitated that the study only lasted 5 days before ending. The result showed that the guards often enjoyed inflicting pain or discomfort, even asking for extra shifts.

However, rather than show why the holocaust happened, these studies simply show us that normal individuals can react in these ways should the conditions fit their purpose. In a way it is easier to focus on the evil itself, rather than the cause.

 In conclusion, there is no overall grand narrative in the post modern era which can explain atrocities such as this. Since global news has taken over, the significance of a European war ending whilst millions die overseas creates a feeling of apathy amongst the civilian population.

[dilrajwilhide1995]

What Is Male Cat Spray Made Of Eye-Opening Useful Ideas

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There is often a huge problem in detail throughout the animal's paws, both at the same manner.First and foremost, an individual and will run away.Start like you can recreate their natural instincts are to be microchipped.They also roam the neighborhood will be a symptom and not so good and some local Councils now ban outside cats can do.* Terbutaline is available at the first cat.

I provided them with a clean cloth to clean an area where the box is that they mark their domain by leaving a cat that he is doing or you may raise it up and ready.4000 mg Taurine capsules from CVS or any cages or blankets.When you release them, make sure that you recognize signs of any kind, dust, some aerosol sprays.Isn't life so much care to keep pets and people too.Neuter all adult males- Male cats will be a cat of fleas.

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How Much Does It Cost To Spay A Cat In The Philippines

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